If there was a medal for the volume and number of profanities issued by a coach then Andy Wood would have a big shiny one now because there were aspects of Clontarfs performance on Saturday that were straight out of a keystone cops film. These games tend to happen when emotional bubbles get burst. Clontarf were coming off a defeat to Lansdowne that finished the League race, shipped a few injuries in the process and came into this game with the unsatisfying secondary target of finishing the season in ……. well ….. Second .
The proceedings started with Clontarf gifting the visitors two tries which they took with the élan of a side that hadn’t been tackled in the game yet. Clontarf responded with two beauties after patient phase building and all looked set for a comfortable home win. After half time we tacked on another for 19 14 and then someone hit the funny button and everything went to pot. Handling , tackling , control , composure , decision making …….all went at the same time …… Pretty much everyone on the sideline morphed into the 1945 Mayor of Hiroshima ……. All you could hear was “what the FXXX was that ?” ringing around the ground as Tarf struggled to no avail with the task of reestablishing structure to their game. They may as well have been trying to herd cats . Unfortunately the efforts came to nothing but more errors and Dolphin took full advantage of our distress and scored three tries from our untypical confusion.
Hopefully all is washed from the system now and we can approach the game with Con in a frame of mind more appropriate to the effort the squad have put in this year.